POWYS County Council street cleaners collected a huge 6.18 tonnes of plastic glasses, fast food boxes, bottles and cans in Builth town centre in their early morning clean-ups during Royal Welsh Show week.
There is a similar situation the morning after events like Llanidloes fancy dress night and Rhayader Carnival, each of which fill the streets with around a tonne of litter.
“We put out extra bins for this busy period, of course,” said Huw Davies, manager of the County Council’s street cleansing operations, “but no quantity of extra bins would cope with this massive volume of litter.”
Rachel Palmer, Tidy Towns Project Officer for Powys is based in Rhayader, and she encouraged people to be more thoughtful with their litter, preventing the need for such large scale clean-ups.
She said: “Powys Council did a fabulous clean-up job after Rhayader Carnival, leaving the place spotless, completely transformed.
"t’s a great carnival and lovely to see people of all ages partying in the streets but we could all have just as much fun without throwing litter on the ground.
"Then these clean-ups wouldn’t have to be such big and expensive operations.”
Keep Wales Tidy and Powys County Council work in partnership in the Welsh Government funded ‘Tidy Towns’ project which supports community volunteers to do a range of environmental improvement projects, including litter picks and wildlife habitat projects throughout the county.
If you’d like to help keep Powys clean and safe for people and wildlife or would like more information on Tidy Towns please contact Rachel on 07717 497442 or rachel.palmer@keepwalestidy.org